Holley,O_OH5_004

Abstract: This is an oral history of Orvil Holley. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns his recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
OH: Hello. My name is Orvil Holley. I was born in Slaterville, Utah on the 15th of November 1925. I was born in the old Echins home. That home still stands this day. In the spring of 1926 my family moved to the Rhoan Wheeler property, which is still there, and at that time it was across the road from the Slaterville Creamery, which was a cooperative association of dairy farmers in the area. It was active for some twenty years. My father was a dairyman and a farmer raising all kinds of crops such as peas, corn, alfalfa, wheat, barley, oats, beets, and some other crops. My father had married my mother who was a widow and he was a widower. He had a family, and when he married my mother she had three boys and a girl. I am the only child of my father and my mother.
My mother was Amelia Echins Alan Holley and my father was Henry Ezra Holley. My father was in his forties when I was born and mother was a few years younger. I remember the early roads. When I was a youngster I particularly remember the grater pulled by what looked like a caterpillar tractor. It came along and grated the roads. Also there were a number of artesian sulfur wells that were drilled in Marriott and Slaterville. These wells were drilled for the purpose of filling up a tanker that was pulled by an old tractor or a team of horses that used to go along and water the roads to keep the dust down a little bit. I don’t know if any of those old wells are still in existence or not. I also remember the kids walking to school. At that time the Slaterville School was located on the property where the Slaterville park is now, right where the backstop is in fact. It was really an interesting thing to me because it was the only building that I knew of that had inside plumbing. All of the farm boys enjoyed that particular part of the schoolhouse.
There were many great things that happened in that school house. I’ll have to tell you one. I think I was in about the fourth grade—maybe it was the third grade. The teacher was a man from North Ogden by the name of Charles Chandler. We only had Charles for one period. That was the last period of the day. Normally, our class was down in the basement, but for this class, the class that Mr. Chandler taught, we would go upstairs. It just so happened that on this particular day three of the boys decided that they would sluff. They were older boys. Their names were Clyde Hunter, Raymond Bowans and Delore Echins. For some reason, they decided that they would get in the closet upstairs and hide in that closet as the classes changed and then they would sneak out of the closets and open a window and go out onto the roof of the restrooms and slide down on the ground and away they would go. Well…it just so happened that Mr. Chandler saw them going into the closet. He called our class to go into that room where the closet was. In those days the children’s seats were all on runners. They would put a row of seats and maybe six or seven, maybe eight seats to one runner. So when you move the seats you had to move the runners too. He had us move those seats right over next to the closet. The closet had two doors that opened to the outside towards us. Then Mr. Chandler got his chair and put the back of it up against the door and his feet on these seats that we were sitting in. There was no way that those boys could get out of that room. Well about two-thirds of the way through the class we could hear some rustling going on inside that room. It was a very small room, they were in cramped conditions. Then all of a sudden we could hear what sounded like water—a trickle of water running into a can. But what the person didn’t know in the closet was that this was a flower can that had holes in the bottom and pretty soon a little yellow stream came out from underneath the door and into our classroom. You can imagine what the class was like in that particular incident. I thought you might be interested in that.
It might be interesting to say a little bit about those old country schools. They weren’t very large. The Slaterville School for example had four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs. But only one of the rooms downstairs was used for teaching. The other room was never fixed up for teaching. It was still dirt, dirt floor—the only things that I can remember that connected that with any of the other rooms were the heating pipes that went through the room. That was a wonderful place for the kids to play in the wintertime. But it was a little dusty and I can remember seeing dust so thick that you couldn’t see from one end of the room to the other. Now generally speaking, school went through the eighth grade, but when I started school, school went through the ninth grade. The way it worked is, we had three classes in each room. So in the basement we had the first, second, and third grade all in the same room. Then the two rooms upstairs had third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and on up into eighth or maybe ninth. I don’t remember which. Anyway, it was kind of an interesting thing as one teacher handled all three grades. My first grade class—the most it ever had in it was about eight and sometimes it only had five, most of the time it was about six kids in the first grade. And some of those kids are still alive today and still live in Slaterville. In as much as my mother was born in a house that was almost on the borderline between Slaterville and Marriott. She attended the Marriott School for some years. We know that some of the Marriott kids attended the Slaterville School some years. In fact, I remember when I was in school that Marriott—when we were in the sixth grade, Marriott had no sixth graders and we did have Marriott fifth graders over in our school. So it is kind of an interesting setup in these schools.
Well let’s go back to the very earliest days, before there was a Slaterville, before there was a Marriott. About 1850, there was some movement of people out into this area of the county. At that time there was no Marriott, there was no Slaterville. In fact, one of the things that we are trying to find out at this time is “when did Marriott become Marriott and when did Slaterville become Slaterville?” So far, we can’t nail that down. But the first settlers in Slaterville were the Steven Slater family—the Steven Perry family. They settled on the North side of what became known as Mill Creek. Right across from Mill Creek was Marriott. Just when Marriott was settled was, I understand, about the same time. We still have some of the descendants of Steven Perry living in Slaterville today. The man for whom Slaterville is named, Richard Slater, came into Slaterville in 1853. As you can tell he wasn’t one of the original settlers so it wasn’t named Slaterville because he was an original settler. Tradition has it that was named Slaterville after Richard Slater because he was a member of the Mormon Battalion. I think that was why Slaterville became as it was. The earliest documentation of the name Slaterville comes from the Deseret News and it is at about 1860. It mentions Slaterville as one of the little communities West of Ogden City. Naturally it had to be named Slaterville before that appeared in the Deseret News but just when, we don’t know.
Irrigation was very important to the people in all of Weber County. If you think of Slaterville, it was a very good place for those early settlers to make their homes because of the water sources. On the South end was the Ogden-Weber River. In the middle was Mill Creek. And on the north end was Four-Mile Creek. They had three water sources going through the community. Now they had to have a way for getting the water from those ditches—those creeks and streams—out to the farms. This is an amazing thing to me. Those old pioneers had some system of knowing where to put those canals and those ditches so they flowed easily with nothing but gravity to pull them along and yet they are still in existence and still being used today. It is magnificent. Now because the water was so important, it was important for those canals and ditches to be clean. That was quite a thing. The presidents of the companies would call to their members and say we are going to clean on such and such a day and we would like you to show up. There would be a huge turnout of men with horses and with cultivators and scrapers and men with shovels and hoes and rakes. They would start—sometimes they would start on each end of the canals and work towards each other. In those days, they cleaned those canals—they were really neat and clean. The ditches were the same way. They were very cooperative one with another even though they may have had some difficulties religiously; they still were together in those community projects.
Now I mentioned something about even though citizens in the city or in the town of Slaterville particularly, may not have been together religiously but worked cooperatively on community programs such as cleaning ditches and so forth. I might say, in about 1860 there was a man that came into Slaterville by the name of Joseph Morris. He was very successful in teaching his religious views to particularly the western half of the Slaterville community. So successful was he, that he was invited to leave by the ecclesiastical authorities here in the community. So he left and he took with him almost all the western half of the community, over fifty people were involved. They went to South Weber.
I might tell you one little story that comes out of that settlement. When Joseph Morris left Slaterville he went to South Weber. It has always been our belief—in fact, it was so written in a Master’s thesis that I did, that this happened to William Jones of Slaterville. But within the last six months we learned that it is not William Jones of Slaterville but William Jones of Marriott that this happened to. We are just learning that the people of Marriott were also involved, more than one, in having people who have succumbed to Mr. Morris’s work. They all moved over to South Weber. At the height of the community there is believed to be about seven hundred people in the South Weber area who were connected with the Morrisites. The story goes that Mr. Jones was disappointed with some of the things that Morris was teaching. For example, he was teaching that the advent of the Savior was imminent. He even set the day. When the savior didn’t come, Mr. Morris found that he had made a mistake in his calculations and so set another day. He still didn’t show up so some of the Morrisites started to get a little bit nervous. Brother Jones from Marriott decided that he would leave and take his wife and away they went. One of the problems that they have is they had to give everything that they owned into the Morrisite Prophet Morris. If anybody wanted to leave they were allowed to leave but they couldn’t take anything with them that they had brought such as grain and flour or food stuffs of any sort. That had to stay and that kind of bothered Mr. Jones. One day after he and his wife left he saw a wagon load of wheat coming out of Kingston Fort which was the name of the area where Mr. Morris and his people lived. This wagon load of grain was headed for the grist mill. Mr. Jones knew that he had contributed much more than one load of grain to the Morrisite cause and he didn’t have anything to live on so he decided to commandeer this load of grain, which he did. But when the news got back to Mr. Morris, he sent some of his people to regain the grain. He also took into custody Mr. and Mrs. Jones. This caused a lot of trouble. The Jones’ relatives went to the legal authorities to try and get them to go and see if they could get the release of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, which they tried to do but were unsuccessful. Finally, it got so bad that they asked the Governor of the state to send the militia to South Weber. The Governor was not in Utah at the time but the person who took his place was in charge and he did call out the militia. They came into South Weber and we can’t go into detail on that but just to say that the militia at a certain time open fired and I have held in my hands the cannonball that came down the side of the mountain, bounced along, went through the fence where Mr. and Mrs. Jones had been kept in custody, landed in the lap of Mrs. Jones. That cannonball is still in existence and the descendents of the Jones family still have it. Just a little story to let you know how things went sometimes in those days.
Going back a little bit to my early days—needless to say, my mother and father never owned a home of their own until they were both at sixty years. They always rented. They worked hard. Their families that were with them worked hard. We always had good living conditions. I was born in a brick home. When we went to the Wheeler place it was a brick home. When we moved back to the Echins place it was still a brick home. We had a good home. We also came up through the ‘30’s, which was the depression. You could go to town—when I was a boy, about seven or eight years old, once a week we would go to town on a Saturday. I always went with my cousin. Either we rode with his folks or he rode with ours. One of the great things that we lived for all week was to go to Ross & Jacks and eat. You could get burger, spuds for fifteen cents, which was enough to feed a man. Then for ten cents more you could get a pie. So for twenty-five cents you could get a meal. Then we would go to the movies, it was a double-feature for a dime. We were well taken care of as far as that type of thing was concerned. A lot of the boys rode horses in those days. A lot of the boys had some really fine horses. They liked to swim in the river. It was dangerous. My older brother almost drowned in the river but Alvin Cobabe who now owns Powder Mountain and Arthur Slater saved his life. They remember it and he remembers it even better than they do.
We used to have what was called ward reunions once every year. Everybody was invited back to that particular ward on a particular date and they had the most fun and the greatest time that you can imagine. Slaterville’s reunion was always on the last Thursday of January. Marriott’s reunion was in February, I don’t remember the date but they still hold their reunion. Marriott still holds their ward reunion. All the other towns around—Farr West, Harrisville, Plain City, Hooper, Taylor, Riverdale—they all have their reunions. It wasn’t unusual for our people from the Slaterville area to go to Marriott and Marriott would come to Slaterville, then they would go to Plain City. It was something they looked forward to that they could have a really wonderful time once each month and sometimes more than that because some of the other communities held their reunion the same month. You can’t imagine, unless you see it, what the dancing was like. The dances were learned dances—quadrilles—and everybody did the same steps, the same moves on the floor. They had Virginia reels, which sometimes people still have today but those kind of dances, where everyone knows what the dance is and they all dance it. It was just beautiful to see. They would dance their shoes off and just have the greatest time. It was just wonderful folks.
Not being familiar with how all the wards handled their reunions, I will just tell you how Slaterville did theirs. Normally it was on the last Thursday of January. The first program started at about eleven o’clock in the morning. It continued for about an hour and a half and then it was time for the dinner. Even though the areas they had to prepare those dinners, you wouldn’t expect that they could do the jobs that they did. They had everything. You can’t believe it. And what a spread they would put on. And all the wards were the same. They all just went all out. When people were so full that they could hardly walk back up the stairs, they would go back up and there may be another program for thirty minutes while the dinner settled and then they would go to dancing. This is in the afternoon. They would dance until time to go back down for the evening meal. They would go back down and have the evening meal, then they would come back up and they would have another program. These programs folks were great. Those people were talented. They could do anything. They were great actors. They would do—it was just amazing. When that program was over, usually about eight-thirty at night, we pushed the benches back and pile them up on top of each other to make room on the dance floor and then the dance began. It never finished until one or two o’clock in the morning. It was just great.
I have been asked to say a little bit about my college years. I have to confess that it took me three years to get through two years of work at Weber College. I only would go two quarters a year and then in the Spring I would have to go home and start to plant and get ready for the next year—the harvest for that year. Then in the Fall I could go back to College and I would go for two quarters, Fall and Winter. While I was at Weber College I became involved with a group of young men who were musicians. I was not a musicians, I had never had a music lesson in my life. The three other fellows were studying music and were fine musicians. Somehow they invited me to join them in a quartet. This quartet lasted for quite a number of years. We sang professionally all over the state of Utah, Idaho, we sang at Sun Valley for the Union Pacific Railroad who owned Sun Valley. In fact, we were invited to go back to Sun Valley and sing for a big convention which hosted President Truman. I wanted to go so bad my teeth hurt but the other fellows said, “No, we have got finals coming up and we are not going to do it.” So we didn’t get to do that.
Following that year, my final year at Weber College, these three wanted to go to the University of Utah to school so we went down there and had a great time. We lived together in an old army barracks. The war was now over, World War II was now over. We practiced our singing every day. We were on the first television station that broadcasts out of Utah, old KDYL. We had a program every week which gave us a little money to spend and we also were hired to sing at big conventions all over the city in Salt Lake that year. The next year our quartet kind of broke up a little bit because I was called on a mission and was gone for two years. When I came back we got together again and even had an agent. I often laugh at the agent’s name, his name was Bill Risky. We always used to laugh that it was “Risky business” that we were in. They had graduated college by the time I got home. I went back to the University of Utah but an unusual thing happened. The President of Weber College had been Henry Aldous Dixon. He had been called and given the chance to become President of Utah State. I got a call from President Dixon one afternoon and he said, “I’d like you to come up and take care of the program bureau here at Utah State.” I explained to President Dixon that I only needed thirteen hours to graduate from the “U” and I knew that it was required that you have fifteen hours from the institution from which you were to graduate. He said, “I think we can work that out.” So I went up to Utah State and headed the program bureau up there and formed a quartet up at Utah State. We traveled all over the country for Utah State, advertising Utah State to the high schools in Idaho and Wyoming, Utah, we even went to California on one big trip. We had a great time, a wonderful experience. So I graduated from Utah State with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech and dramatics. I taught two years in public school and then was hired by the LDS church to teach seminary. It was required that we go down to BYU for a symposium which lasted six, seven, eight weeks every other summer. We decided instead of just going down there let’s work on a degree. So many of us worked on a degree down there and I graduated with a Master’s degree from BYU in 1966.
It has been suggested that I give a little ecclesiastical history of the area. I think that has been well written up as far as the early days of Ogden City and Weber County is concerned. I know that Lorin Farr had a great deal to do with both the ecclesiastical and political history here in the Ogden area. There were some others who were very influential. Before there was any ecclesiastical authority in Slaterville, we were no doubt part of the Northern Stake of Zion at that time—two stakes of Zion, one in the Northern part of Weber County and the other in the Southern part. The first ecclesiastical person to hold an office in Slaterville was a man by the name of Thomas Richardson. He was something like a Branch President. He served faithfully for quite a number of years. One of his counselors was Edwin Smoot. After several years had gone by, Thomas Richardson began not feeling too well and also he was going to receive the call of Patriarch, so it was decided that Slaterville would probably become a ward. During the time that Thomas Richardson was not active as the Branch President, Brother Smoot being next in line did most of the ecclesiastical work in the Slaterville area. We are very grateful to Mr. Smoot for keeping a journal. In it he records the things that he did ecclesiastically—setting people apart, baptizing them, helping people do this and do that. He was very active. But a sad thing occurred when they held a meeting to announce the new Bishop. Brother Smoot thought that it would be him and it turned out to be John A. Allred. Brother Smoot withdrew from the church and took a good number with him. In reading his journal, you read up right to the day when they chose Allred as the Bishop. He recounts his great work in the church. Following the Bishops choosing and ordaining, Brother Smoot never says one more thing about the church except, “I asked them to take my name off the rolls.” Kind of a sad day.
We have been quite fortunate in this Slaterville area. Towns all around us have seen a great deal of growth. The old farmers have tried to hang on to most of the property that they have had and have tried to farm it. But we have finally seen a change in the last several years. Now within about the last year we have two fairly large developments in the Slaterville-Marriott area. It is sometimes a little difficult for us old timers to realize that other people need homes to live in too. We think we have a beautiful area here. The people have been united in the things that have been going on as far as organizing the present city of Marriott-Slaterville, which is now approximately sixteen years old. It has been amazing how the people have worked together. Before, Marriott and Slaterville didn’t always get along the best. I could tell you stories about that. Maybe I will.
Today, Marriott and Slaterville have a church where we meet together. We have three wards in that building and we are getting along fine. I am sure it is different than what some of the older folks thought we would be able to do. When Slaterville first decided that they needed a new building—they had no Bishop’s office, they had to meet in the coal room, the furnace room of the building, to hold their Bishop meetings. Things were just not good for that particular time. Things were changing in the church. More meetings were being held. Finally, the bishopric of the Slaterville ward decided that they would see what they could do to make the old building suitable for the situation of the day. They got an architect to draw up some plans. When he finished the plans they looked good to the ward leaders and so the ward leaders asked the architect how much this would cost. He said nineteen thousand dollars should do it. So the bishopric scratched their heads and tried to figure out who on earth they could borrow nineteen thousand dollars from to build the building and pay the man back so much a month—if we could find somebody. Finally, one man came up as the one who could loan us nineteen thousand dollars. He was a bachelor, he had never married. He wasn’t a member of the church. In fact, he was descendents of people who had joined the Morrisites. His name was Joe Stevens. We made an appointment and met with Joe and visited with him a few minutes. Then the bishop told him why we were there, that we had come to ask him if he would loan us nineteen thousand dollars to remodel the old church. Joe came up out of his chair and he said, “My goodness, I haven’t got that kind of money.” So we chatted a little bit and the amazing thing was before we left the house he wanted to know if he could be baptized. Shortly after, he was baptized. He died within just very few weeks after we had visited with Joe in his home. But he died a member of the church.
Now how did Marriott and Slaterville get together? Well nobody thought they could. Half of Slaterville didn’t think they could get along with Marriott and half of Marriott didn’t think they could get along with Slaterville. But the two bishoprics got together and they had determined that they would look for a place to build. They picked a place on the old Marriott farm over in Marriott where California Pack had purchased one acre of property from the Marriott family to build a pea viner. The two wards purchased that piece of property from California Pack. Then the two wards were trying to decide how they were going to go about raising money and whatnot to try and move the project along. In the meantime, the committee in Marriott had written a letter to the first presidency, President David O. McKay, explaining that they would prefer to build their own building. Well not long after that letter was received by President McKay, the two bishoprics received word from our Stake President, President Wimmer, that two of the General Authorities, Bishop Vandenburg, the presiding Bishop of the church, and Elder Thomas Monson, a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve, were assigned to come up and meet with us. So the day was set and we met with Brother Vandenburg and Elder Monson in the basement of the old Slaterville church. After the pleasantries were over, Elder Monson looked at Bishop Buck, Bishop of the Marriott Ward, Clarence Buck, and he said, “President McKay has received your letter and read your letter and he has told us that we are not to come here and try to push a building down your throat. If you want to build a building, you are welcome to do so. However, be cautioned, you won’t be able to afford the kind of building that you need, and it is our desire that you two wards get together if you possibly can.” Then there was some discussion between Bishop Buck and the General Authorities concerning the problem, and with how many people were opposed to it in Marriott. There was sufficient number that it would cause some concern. Bishop Vandenburg, all of a sudden, he lighted up like a light and said, “Well I am from Ogden and I know Marriott. There are some Dutch people in Marriott aren’t there? And Bishop Buck said, “Yes, there are.” “Well they’ll support you won’t they?” “Well they are the worst ones in the whole ward.” Bishop Vandenburg dropped his head and Elder Monson looked over at me and smiled and then he said, “How do you change a Dutchman’s mind, Bishop?” Bishop Vandenburg sat there for a second, looked up and said, “You can’t.” Anyway, we got together and rode with the General Authorities around to look at different places where we might build and they picked out the spot where the church now stands. We dedicated that building in 1968. So it is almost forty years old. I think we have gotten along as good or better than most of the wards have who just had the wards divided among themselves. It has been really quite a wonderful thing.
Now since those two wards went together some sixteen years ago, Marriott and Slaterville, the residents of those two communities, by a huge majority of vote, voted to go together to form a city. The city’s name is Marriott-Slaterville. There was some opposition to that. Some people said, “That was too long a name, make it simpler.” They pointed out other communities that had done that. But we knew the makeup of Marriott and Slaterville. Slaterville didn’t want to lose its identity and Marriott didn’t want to lose theirs. So why not Marriott-Slaterville? The wards today are Marriot-Slaterville 1, Marriott-Slaterville 2, and Marriott-Slaterville 3.

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Abstract: This is an oral history of Orvil Holley. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns his recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
OH: Hello. My name is Orvil Holley. I was born in Slaterville, Utah on the 15th of November 1925. I was born in the old Echins home. That home still stands this day. In the spring of 1926 my family moved to the Rhoan Wheeler property, which is still there, and at that time it was across the road from the Slaterville Creamery, which was a cooperative association of dairy farmers in the area. It was active for some twenty years. My father was a dairyman and a farmer raising all kinds of crops such as peas, corn, alfalfa, wheat, barley, oats, beets, and some other crops. My father had married my mother who was a widow and he was a widower. He had a family, and when he married my mother she had three boys and a girl. I am the only child of my father and my mother.
My mother was Amelia Echins Alan Holley and my father was Henry Ezra Holley. My father was in his forties when I was born and mother was a few years younger. I remember the early roads. When I was a youngster I particularly remember the grater pulled by what looked like a caterpillar tractor. It came along and grated the roads. Also there were a number of artesian sulfur wells that were drilled in Marriott and Slaterville. These wells were drilled for the purpose of filling up a tanker that was pulled by an old tractor or a team of horses that used to go along and water the roads to keep the dust down a little bit. I don’t know if any of those old wells are still in existence or not. I also remember the kids walking to school. At that time the Slaterville School was located on the property where the Slaterville park is now, right where the backstop is in fact. It was really an interesting thing to me because it was the only building that I knew of that had inside plumbing. All of the farm boys enjoyed that particular part of the schoolhouse.
There were many great things that happened in that school house. I’ll have to tell you one. I think I was in about the fourth grade—maybe it was the third grade. The teacher was a man from North Ogden by the name of Charles Chandler. We only had Charles for one period. That was the last period of the day. Normally, our class was down in the basement, but for this class, the class that Mr. Chandler taught, we would go upstairs. It just so happened that on this particular day three of the boys decided that they would sluff. They were older boys. Their names were Clyde Hunter, Raymond Bowans and Delore Echins. For some reason, they decided that they would get in the closet upstairs and hide in that closet as the classes changed and then they would sneak out of the closets and open a window and go out onto the roof of the restrooms and slide down on the ground and away they would go. Well…it just so happened that Mr. Chandler saw them going into the closet. He called our class to go into that room where the closet was. In those days the children’s seats were all on runners. They would put a row of seats and maybe six or seven, maybe eight seats to one runner. So when you move the seats you had to move the runners too. He had us move those seats right over next to the closet. The closet had two doors that opened to the outside towards us. Then Mr. Chandler got his chair and put the back of it up against the door and his feet on these seats that we were sitting in. There was no way that those boys could get out of that room. Well about two-thirds of the way through the class we could hear some rustling going on inside that room. It was a very small room, they were in cramped conditions. Then all of a sudden we could hear what sounded like water—a trickle of water running into a can. But what the person didn’t know in the closet was that this was a flower can that had holes in the bottom and pretty soon a little yellow stream came out from underneath the door and into our classroom. You can imagine what the class was like in that particular incident. I thought you might be interested in that.
It might be interesting to say a little bit about those old country schools. They weren’t very large. The Slaterville School for example had four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs. But only one of the rooms downstairs was used for teaching. The other room was never fixed up for teaching. It was still dirt, dirt floor—the only things that I can remember that connected that with any of the other rooms were the heating pipes that went through the room. That was a wonderful place for the kids to play in the wintertime. But it was a little dusty and I can remember seeing dust so thick that you couldn’t see from one end of the room to the other. Now generally speaking, school went through the eighth grade, but when I started school, school went through the ninth grade. The way it worked is, we had three classes in each room. So in the basement we had the first, second, and third grade all in the same room. Then the two rooms upstairs had third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and on up into eighth or maybe ninth. I don’t remember which. Anyway, it was kind of an interesting thing as one teacher handled all three grades. My first grade class—the most it ever had in it was about eight and sometimes it only had five, most of the time it was about six kids in the first grade. And some of those kids are still alive today and still live in Slaterville. In as much as my mother was born in a house that was almost on the borderline between Slaterville and Marriott. She attended the Marriott School for some years. We know that some of the Marriott kids attended the Slaterville School some years. In fact, I remember when I was in school that Marriott—when we were in the sixth grade, Marriott had no sixth graders and we did have Marriott fifth graders over in our school. So it is kind of an interesting setup in these schools.
Well let’s go back to the very earliest days, before there was a Slaterville, before there was a Marriott. About 1850, there was some movement of people out into this area of the county. At that time there was no Marriott, there was no Slaterville. In fact, one of the things that we are trying to find out at this time is “when did Marriott become Marriott and when did Slaterville become Slaterville?” So far, we can’t nail that down. But the first settlers in Slaterville were the Steven Slater family—the Steven Perry family. They settled on the North side of what became known as Mill Creek. Right across from Mill Creek was Marriott. Just when Marriott was settled was, I understand, about the same time. We still have some of the descendants of Steven Perry living in Slaterville today. The man for whom Slaterville is named, Richard Slater, came into Slaterville in 1853. As you can tell he wasn’t one of the original settlers so it wasn’t named Slaterville because he was an original settler. Tradition has it that was named Slaterville after Richard Slater because he was a member of the Mormon Battalion. I think that was why Slaterville became as it was. The earliest documentation of the name Slaterville comes from the Deseret News and it is at about 1860. It mentions Slaterville as one of the little communities West of Ogden City. Naturally it had to be named Slaterville before that appeared in the Deseret News but just when, we don’t know.
Irrigation was very important to the people in all of Weber County. If you think of Slaterville, it was a very good place for those early settlers to make their homes because of the water sources. On the South end was the Ogden-Weber River. In the middle was Mill Creek. And on the north end was Four-Mile Creek. They had three water sources going through the community. Now they had to have a way for getting the water from those ditches—those creeks and streams—out to the farms. This is an amazing thing to me. Those old pioneers had some system of knowing where to put those canals and those ditches so they flowed easily with nothing but gravity to pull them along and yet they are still in existence and still being used today. It is magnificent. Now because the water was so important, it was important for those canals and ditches to be clean. That was quite a thing. The presidents of the companies would call to their members and say we are going to clean on such and such a day and we would like you to show up. There would be a huge turnout of men with horses and with cultivators and scrapers and men with shovels and hoes and rakes. They would start—sometimes they would start on each end of the canals and work towards each other. In those days, they cleaned those canals—they were really neat and clean. The ditches were the same way. They were very cooperative one with another even though they may have had some difficulties religiously; they still were together in those community projects.
Now I mentioned something about even though citizens in the city or in the town of Slaterville particularly, may not have been together religiously but worked cooperatively on community programs such as cleaning ditches and so forth. I might say, in about 1860 there was a man that came into Slaterville by the name of Joseph Morris. He was very successful in teaching his religious views to particularly the western half of the Slaterville community. So successful was he, that he was invited to leave by the ecclesiastical authorities here in the community. So he left and he took with him almost all the western half of the community, over fifty people were involved. They went to South Weber.
I might tell you one little story that comes out of that settlement. When Joseph Morris left Slaterville he went to South Weber. It has always been our belief—in fact, it was so written in a Master’s thesis that I did, that this happened to William Jones of Slaterville. But within the last six months we learned that it is not William Jones of Slaterville but William Jones of Marriott that this happened to. We are just learning that the people of Marriott were also involved, more than one, in having people who have succumbed to Mr. Morris’s work. They all moved over to South Weber. At the height of the community there is believed to be about seven hundred people in the South Weber area who were connected with the Morrisites. The story goes that Mr. Jones was disappointed with some of the things that Morris was teaching. For example, he was teaching that the advent of the Savior was imminent. He even set the day. When the savior didn’t come, Mr. Morris found that he had made a mistake in his calculations and so set another day. He still didn’t show up so some of the Morrisites started to get a little bit nervous. Brother Jones from Marriott decided that he would leave and take his wife and away they went. One of the problems that they have is they had to give everything that they owned into the Morrisite Prophet Morris. If anybody wanted to leave they were allowed to leave but they couldn’t take anything with them that they had brought such as grain and flour or food stuffs of any sort. That had to stay and that kind of bothered Mr. Jones. One day after he and his wife left he saw a wagon load of wheat coming out of Kingston Fort which was the name of the area where Mr. Morris and his people lived. This wagon load of grain was headed for the grist mill. Mr. Jones knew that he had contributed much more than one load of grain to the Morrisite cause and he didn’t have anything to live on so he decided to commandeer this load of grain, which he did. But when the news got back to Mr. Morris, he sent some of his people to regain the grain. He also took into custody Mr. and Mrs. Jones. This caused a lot of trouble. The Jones’ relatives went to the legal authorities to try and get them to go and see if they could get the release of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, which they tried to do but were unsuccessful. Finally, it got so bad that they asked the Governor of the state to send the militia to South Weber. The Governor was not in Utah at the time but the person who took his place was in charge and he did call out the militia. They came into South Weber and we can’t go into detail on that but just to say that the militia at a certain time open fired and I have held in my hands the cannonball that came down the side of the mountain, bounced along, went through the fence where Mr. and Mrs. Jones had been kept in custody, landed in the lap of Mrs. Jones. That cannonball is still in existence and the descendents of the Jones family still have it. Just a little story to let you know how things went sometimes in those days.
Going back a little bit to my early days—needless to say, my mother and father never owned a home of their own until they were both at sixty years. They always rented. They worked hard. Their families that were with them worked hard. We always had good living conditions. I was born in a brick home. When we went to the Wheeler place it was a brick home. When we moved back to the Echins place it was still a brick home. We had a good home. We also came up through the ‘30’s, which was the depression. You could go to town—when I was a boy, about seven or eight years old, once a week we would go to town on a Saturday. I always went with my cousin. Either we rode with his folks or he rode with ours. One of the great things that we lived for all week was to go to Ross & Jacks and eat. You could get burger, spuds for fifteen cents, which was enough to feed a man. Then for ten cents more you could get a pie. So for twenty-five cents you could get a meal. Then we would go to the movies, it was a double-feature for a dime. We were well taken care of as far as that type of thing was concerned. A lot of the boys rode horses in those days. A lot of the boys had some really fine horses. They liked to swim in the river. It was dangerous. My older brother almost drowned in the river but Alvin Cobabe who now owns Powder Mountain and Arthur Slater saved his life. They remember it and he remembers it even better than they do.
We used to have what was called ward reunions once every year. Everybody was invited back to that particular ward on a particular date and they had the most fun and the greatest time that you can imagine. Slaterville’s reunion was always on the last Thursday of January. Marriott’s reunion was in February, I don’t remember the date but they still hold their reunion. Marriott still holds their ward reunion. All the other towns around—Farr West, Harrisville, Plain City, Hooper, Taylor, Riverdale—they all have their reunions. It wasn’t unusual for our people from the Slaterville area to go to Marriott and Marriott would come to Slaterville, then they would go to Plain City. It was something they looked forward to that they could have a really wonderful time once each month and sometimes more than that because some of the other communities held their reunion the same month. You can’t imagine, unless you see it, what the dancing was like. The dances were learned dances—quadrilles—and everybody did the same steps, the same moves on the floor. They had Virginia reels, which sometimes people still have today but those kind of dances, where everyone knows what the dance is and they all dance it. It was just beautiful to see. They would dance their shoes off and just have the greatest time. It was just wonderful folks.
Not being familiar with how all the wards handled their reunions, I will just tell you how Slaterville did theirs. Normally it was on the last Thursday of January. The first program started at about eleven o’clock in the morning. It continued for about an hour and a half and then it was time for the dinner. Even though the areas they had to prepare those dinners, you wouldn’t expect that they could do the jobs that they did. They had everything. You can’t believe it. And what a spread they would put on. And all the wards were the same. They all just went all out. When people were so full that they could hardly walk back up the stairs, they would go back up and there may be another program for thirty minutes while the dinner settled and then they would go to dancing. This is in the afternoon. They would dance until time to go back down for the evening meal. They would go back down and have the evening meal, then they would come back up and they would have another program. These programs folks were great. Those people were talented. They could do anything. They were great actors. They would do—it was just amazing. When that program was over, usually about eight-thirty at night, we pushed the benches back and pile them up on top of each other to make room on the dance floor and then the dance began. It never finished until one or two o’clock in the morning. It was just great.
I have been asked to say a little bit about my college years. I have to confess that it took me three years to get through two years of work at Weber College. I only would go two quarters a year and then in the Spring I would have to go home and start to plant and get ready for the next year—the harvest for that year. Then in the Fall I could go back to College and I would go for two quarters, Fall and Winter. While I was at Weber College I became involved with a group of young men who were musicians. I was not a musicians, I had never had a music lesson in my life. The three other fellows were studying music and were fine musicians. Somehow they invited me to join them in a quartet. This quartet lasted for quite a number of years. We sang professionally all over the state of Utah, Idaho, we sang at Sun Valley for the Union Pacific Railroad who owned Sun Valley. In fact, we were invited to go back to Sun Valley and sing for a big convention which hosted President Truman. I wanted to go so bad my teeth hurt but the other fellows said, “No, we have got finals coming up and we are not going to do it.” So we didn’t get to do that.
Following that year, my final year at Weber College, these three wanted to go to the University of Utah to school so we went down there and had a great time. We lived together in an old army barracks. The war was now over, World War II was now over. We practiced our singing every day. We were on the first television station that broadcasts out of Utah, old KDYL. We had a program every week which gave us a little money to spend and we also were hired to sing at big conventions all over the city in Salt Lake that year. The next year our quartet kind of broke up a little bit because I was called on a mission and was gone for two years. When I came back we got together again and even had an agent. I often laugh at the agent’s name, his name was Bill Risky. We always used to laugh that it was “Risky business” that we were in. They had graduated college by the time I got home. I went back to the University of Utah but an unusual thing happened. The President of Weber College had been Henry Aldous Dixon. He had been called and given the chance to become President of Utah State. I got a call from President Dixon one afternoon and he said, “I’d like you to come up and take care of the program bureau here at Utah State.” I explained to President Dixon that I only needed thirteen hours to graduate from the “U” and I knew that it was required that you have fifteen hours from the institution from which you were to graduate. He said, “I think we can work that out.” So I went up to Utah State and headed the program bureau up there and formed a quartet up at Utah State. We traveled all over the country for Utah State, advertising Utah State to the high schools in Idaho and Wyoming, Utah, we even went to California on one big trip. We had a great time, a wonderful experience. So I graduated from Utah State with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech and dramatics. I taught two years in public school and then was hired by the LDS church to teach seminary. It was required that we go down to BYU for a symposium which lasted six, seven, eight weeks every other summer. We decided instead of just going down there let’s work on a degree. So many of us worked on a degree down there and I graduated with a Master’s degree from BYU in 1966.
It has been suggested that I give a little ecclesiastical history of the area. I think that has been well written up as far as the early days of Ogden City and Weber County is concerned. I know that Lorin Farr had a great deal to do with both the ecclesiastical and political history here in the Ogden area. There were some others who were very influential. Before there was any ecclesiastical authority in Slaterville, we were no doubt part of the Northern Stake of Zion at that time—two stakes of Zion, one in the Northern part of Weber County and the other in the Southern part. The first ecclesiastical person to hold an office in Slaterville was a man by the name of Thomas Richardson. He was something like a Branch President. He served faithfully for quite a number of years. One of his counselors was Edwin Smoot. After several years had gone by, Thomas Richardson began not feeling too well and also he was going to receive the call of Patriarch, so it was decided that Slaterville would probably become a ward. During the time that Thomas Richardson was not active as the Branch President, Brother Smoot being next in line did most of the ecclesiastical work in the Slaterville area. We are very grateful to Mr. Smoot for keeping a journal. In it he records the things that he did ecclesiastically—setting people apart, baptizing them, helping people do this and do that. He was very active. But a sad thing occurred when they held a meeting to announce the new Bishop. Brother Smoot thought that it would be him and it turned out to be John A. Allred. Brother Smoot withdrew from the church and took a good number with him. In reading his journal, you read up right to the day when they chose Allred as the Bishop. He recounts his great work in the church. Following the Bishops choosing and ordaining, Brother Smoot never says one more thing about the church except, “I asked them to take my name off the rolls.” Kind of a sad day.
We have been quite fortunate in this Slaterville area. Towns all around us have seen a great deal of growth. The old farmers have tried to hang on to most of the property that they have had and have tried to farm it. But we have finally seen a change in the last several years. Now within about the last year we have two fairly large developments in the Slaterville-Marriott area. It is sometimes a little difficult for us old timers to realize that other people need homes to live in too. We think we have a beautiful area here. The people have been united in the things that have been going on as far as organizing the present city of Marriott-Slaterville, which is now approximately sixteen years old. It has been amazing how the people have worked together. Before, Marriott and Slaterville didn’t always get along the best. I could tell you stories about that. Maybe I will.
Today, Marriott and Slaterville have a church where we meet together. We have three wards in that building and we are getting along fine. I am sure it is different than what some of the older folks thought we would be able to do. When Slaterville first decided that they needed a new building—they had no Bishop’s office, they had to meet in the coal room, the furnace room of the building, to hold their Bishop meetings. Things were just not good for that particular time. Things were changing in the church. More meetings were being held. Finally, the bishopric of the Slaterville ward decided that they would see what they could do to make the old building suitable for the situation of the day. They got an architect to draw up some plans. When he finished the plans they looked good to the ward leaders and so the ward leaders asked the architect how much this would cost. He said nineteen thousand dollars should do it. So the bishopric scratched their heads and tried to figure out who on earth they could borrow nineteen thousand dollars from to build the building and pay the man back so much a month—if we could find somebody. Finally, one man came up as the one who could loan us nineteen thousand dollars. He was a bachelor, he had never married. He wasn’t a member of the church. In fact, he was descendents of people who had joined the Morrisites. His name was Joe Stevens. We made an appointment and met with Joe and visited with him a few minutes. Then the bishop told him why we were there, that we had come to ask him if he would loan us nineteen thousand dollars to remodel the old church. Joe came up out of his chair and he said, “My goodness, I haven’t got that kind of money.” So we chatted a little bit and the amazing thing was before we left the house he wanted to know if he could be baptized. Shortly after, he was baptized. He died within just very few weeks after we had visited with Joe in his home. But he died a member of the church.
Now how did Marriott and Slaterville get together? Well nobody thought they could. Half of Slaterville didn’t think they could get along with Marriott and half of Marriott didn’t think they could get along with Slaterville. But the two bishoprics got together and they had determined that they would look for a place to build. They picked a place on the old Marriott farm over in Marriott where California Pack had purchased one acre of property from the Marriott family to build a pea viner. The two wards purchased that piece of property from California Pack. Then the two wards were trying to decide how they were going to go about raising money and whatnot to try and move the project along. In the meantime, the committee in Marriott had written a letter to the first presidency, President David O. McKay, explaining that they would prefer to build their own building. Well not long after that letter was received by President McKay, the two bishoprics received word from our Stake President, President Wimmer, that two of the General Authorities, Bishop Vandenburg, the presiding Bishop of the church, and Elder Thomas Monson, a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve, were assigned to come up and meet with us. So the day was set and we met with Brother Vandenburg and Elder Monson in the basement of the old Slaterville church. After the pleasantries were over, Elder Monson looked at Bishop Buck, Bishop of the Marriott Ward, Clarence Buck, and he said, “President McKay has received your letter and read your letter and he has told us that we are not to come here and try to push a building down your throat. If you want to build a building, you are welcome to do so. However, be cautioned, you won’t be able to afford the kind of building that you need, and it is our desire that you two wards get together if you possibly can.” Then there was some discussion between Bishop Buck and the General Authorities concerning the problem, and with how many people were opposed to it in Marriott. There was sufficient number that it would cause some concern. Bishop Vandenburg, all of a sudden, he lighted up like a light and said, “Well I am from Ogden and I know Marriott. There are some Dutch people in Marriott aren’t there? And Bishop Buck said, “Yes, there are.” “Well they’ll support you won’t they?” “Well they are the worst ones in the whole ward.” Bishop Vandenburg dropped his head and Elder Monson looked over at me and smiled and then he said, “How do you change a Dutchman’s mind, Bishop?” Bishop Vandenburg sat there for a second, looked up and said, “You can’t.” Anyway, we got together and rode with the General Authorities around to look at different places where we might build and they picked out the spot where the church now stands. We dedicated that building in 1968. So it is almost forty years old. I think we have gotten along as good or better than most of the wards have who just had the wards divided among themselves. It has been really quite a wonderful thing.
Now since those two wards went together some sixteen years ago, Marriott and Slaterville, the residents of those two communities, by a huge majority of vote, voted to go together to form a city. The city’s name is Marriott-Slaterville. There was some opposition to that. Some people said, “That was too long a name, make it simpler.” They pointed out other communities that had done that. But we knew the makeup of Marriott and Slaterville. Slaterville didn’t want to lose its identity and Marriott didn’t want to lose theirs. So why not Marriott-Slaterville? The wards today are Marriot-Slaterville 1, Marriott-Slaterville 2, and Marriott-Slaterville 3.